In an explanation that may have seemed self-evident, the U.S. Supreme Court has clarified that dumping undersized red grouper overboard in an attempt to deceive fish and game officials is not the same as shredding financial documents to mislead auditors, regulators, and shareholders.

The Court reversed a ruling from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that held the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's prohibition on destruction or concealment of "any record, document, or tangible object" applied to commercial fishermen who threw undersized fish back in the Gulf of Mexico after inspection by National Marine Fisheries officers.

SAC Capital, one of Wall Street’s biggest hedge funds founded by billionaire Steven A. Cohen, has been indicted for insider training.

The 41-page federal indictment (attached below) is one of the most high-profile insider trading cases in U.S. history.

SAC Capital (the firm bears Cohen’s initials) engaged in a decade-long scheme of profiting from non-public information from employees of publicly-traded companies and other sources, the indictment alleges.

The scheme “was substantial, pervasive and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry,” according to the indictment, blaming “institutional indifference” to unlawful conduct.

This could mean the end for Cohen’s legendary Wall Street career. He is one of the highest-profile figures in U.S. finance with a net worth of $8.8 billion, according to Forbes. Ranked the No. 40 richest American, he is among an elite group of hedge fund managers to personally earn at least $1 billion a year.

Along with the criminal charges, federal prosecutors filed a civil forfeiture complaint seeking to recover millions of dollars in gains from insider trading offenses.

A group of Facebook shareholders has filed a lawsuit on behalf of all those who bought Facebook stock during the company's initial public offering. The suit accuses Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and other officers of the company of making false statements in the IPO prospectus that misrepresented the company's potential loss of revenue.

The California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), one of the largest public pension funds in the country, has filed a derivative lawsuit against Wal-Mart over the reports of widespread bribery by the retailer's Mexico division that have enveloped the company in scandal in recent weeks. CalSTRS claims that Wal-Mart directors, both past and present, violated their fiduciary duties to shareholders by engaging in the Mexican bribery schemes, failing to investigate the allegations once they surfaced, and failing to inform shareholders of the alleged wrongdoing of Wal-Mart officers.

Facebook has filed its long-anticipated S-1 form in preparation for an initial public offering of stock. While the filing does not list the specifics of the offering, it does contain details of the inner workings of the social networking company that were previously unavailable to the public.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged six former
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives with securities fraud alleging that the executives
knew and approved of untrue or misleading statements regarding the companies'
exposure to risky investments such as subprime loans.As part of the indictments, Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac have signed Non-Prosecution Agreements with the SEC whereby the
companies agreed to accept responsibility for their actions.

A federal judge in New York has rejected the proposed settlement between
the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup that would have
resolved the SEC's lawsuit accusing Citigroup of securities violations.
The judge in the case found that, because the proposed settlement did
not present the relevant facts, the settlement was "neither fair, nor
reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest."

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has filed lawsuits against 17 financial institutions alleging violations of federal securities law and common law in the sale of mortgage-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The FHFA claims that the marketing and sales descriptions provided by the financial institutions misrepresented the nature and risk of the securities in question.

A group of shareholders has filed a lawsuit accusing Rupert Murdoch's
News Corp. of gross corporate governance failures related to the UK
phone hacking scandal. The lawsuit comes as an amended complaint to an
existing lawsuit that charged the company with nepotism related to the
acquisition of a company owned by Rupert Murdoch's daughters. The
complaint asserts that this acquisition and the hacking scandal
demonstrate a "culture run amuck within News Corp and a board that
provides no effective review or oversight."